How Cooking Made Us Humans By Richard Wrangham

Regardless the person, everyone still orders from restaurants, or they microwave a frozen dinner meal once in awhile. In contemporary society, it 's much more efficient to order take out rather than to cook and prepare your own food due to the lack of time. Sadly people even forget the taste of fresh, home cooked meals. Nowadays people don’t know what it’s like to sit down and enjoy a nice hearty home cooked meal, instead they’re always on the run grabbing a quick bite here and there. Unfortunately with such busy lives people don’t have the opportunity to watch cooking shows, go to cooking class, or even cook for their children. People just want to come home and relax they don’t want to have to worry about cooking and all the preparation that comes with it, they would much rather order take out and avoid all the hassle of cooking. In Berry Wendell’s Essay “The Pleasures of Eating”, we are given insight on how very little common people know about where their food comes from and what it goes through. “When a Crop Becomes King” by Michael Pollan reveals how corn, a single crop could be involved in such a wide array of industry and be used in almost everything. David Barboza’s article “If You Pitch It, They Will Eat”, focuses on how in modern society advertising is everywhere and it is taking a big role in everyday life. Through the work of Berry, Pollan, and Barboza we are shown that ignorance is a defining human trait.

These findings insist on the idea that our ancestors evolved to be scavengers and gatherers because it was the only way to find nutrients. Early humans were required to search for food. Conditions required them to evolve in a way that the body stores energy, so when resources became scarce, they stayed healthy and could contribute to their community efficiently. Obtaining the ability to store energy in order for humans stay healthy was an extremely important factor. After our ancestors migrated out of East Africa, they evolved to wonder and scavenge for food. Now, humans are able to live comfortably in a single location. Compared to our ancestors constantly moving looking for food and shelter. (Jurmain et al. 350-351).

It is said that farming is "the worst mistake in the history of the human race."(2). In An Edible History of Humanity, chapter two, Tom Standage explained the reasoning behind this statement. The explanation is, farming took longer, created health issues and changed the structure of our bodies.

The emergence of agriculture was a major stepping stone in human history. During this birth of agriculture, also known as the Neolithic revolution, humans began inhabiting permanent settlements, grow their own crops, and domesticate both plants and animals for food (Weisdorf, 2005). Considering humans have been hunter-gatherers for the majority of their approximately 7 million years of existence, the emergence of agriculture in the Old World only occurring 10,000-5,000 years ago, marks a significant transformation in food sustenance techniques (Weisdorf, 2005). However, this turning point in history is associated with both positive and negative implications. There is much controversy over whether or not the introduction of

Modern humans today have the option to go to their local grocery stores for food and water. However, that is not case with early humans, to survive they had to hunt, or gather their food. Harsh climate changes could cause a scarce food supply. Without any food to hunt or find, the small groups were forced to move. Early humans would eventually overcome some of these obstacles, by learning how to make simple tools. One of the biggest discoveries was how to start a fire (Wilkinson, 16). Harsh climates soon became bearable with the aid of fire. Approximately 120,000 years

“Single-Handed Cooking” written by JJ Goode was the complete opposite of what I expected the article to be about. I thought the article single-handed cooking would be about a single parent/person working in the kitchen by themselves. But, I was wrong it turns out the article is about a guy who overcomes his misfortune of one arm being handicap, to do what he loves most cooking. I like how Goodes describes the kitchen of being a place of relaxation for most people, but for him it’s always been about facing his challenges of having one arm. Goodes said he used to avoid chopping up vegetables or food, and other grueling tasks of prepping because chopping proved to be difficult for him because he has on arm. Then he came to realize that sooner or later, to fully achieve success as a cook, he would have to do what he had been so good at avoiding chopping up food.

The essay “Eat Food: Food Defined,” by Michael Pollan was written to address the general public about the food industry. Originally published in his 2008 book In Defense of Food. Pollan uses relatable topics as examples, such as family, common food items, and common belief that everyone wants to be healthy. The essay brings across Pollan’s point by establishing his credibility, explaining why this is important to us, and telling us how to react to the given facts. Pollan makes the readers inquire how we define food by drawing our attention to the importance of examining our food before eating it.

An Edible History of Humanity is a book written by Tom Standage. It was first published on in 2009 by Walker & Co in the English language. The book is divided into six parts covering twelve chapters. It talks about the civilization of man from Old Stone Age during hunting and gathering all the way to present-day day. In this book, Standage describes how the development of food production has contributed to the civilization of humans (Standage, 113). He also outlines the role of food in the existence of humankind. The main theme in this text surrounds’ the history of man painting food as the tool in industrial evolution, civilization and how it impacts wars, as well as ecological competition. Standage concludes that food is the key cause of

In the text, An Edible History of Humanity, Tom Standage provides his take on how the past was so deeply affected by food throughout the generations. The book approaches history in a different way altogether: as a sequence of changes caused, influenced or enabled by food. Standage explains that throughout history, food has not only provided sustenance but has also acted as the catalyst of societal organization, social change, economic expansion, military conflict, geopolitical competition and industrial development. As Tom Standage explains, since the time of prehistory to present,

The above explanation of digestion occurs in a ‘normal’ functioning body. There are several dilemmas involving digestion that the human body may encounter with progressed age, disease, or improper mechanics, such as lack of teeth. A major threat involving a decrease in digestion ability is malnutrition. Malnutrition does not simply refer to not eating, but also encompasses insufficient absorbance of nutrients once food has been eaten. There is a wide array of factors that may lead to malnutrition in an individual. Mechanically, the lack of teeth is a simple but yet common reason of decreased nutrition intake. Though salivary glands are stimulated upon the introduction of food to the mouth, a person with no teeth tends to avoid the more strenuous foods to chew, such as meats, carrots, lettuce, and nuts, and become partial to a lot of soft foods like potatoes and eggs, which may not necessarily be the most nutritious or balanced. Individuals with gum disease may have all their teeth, but it can become sore for them to chew their meals and, as a result, the eating dwindles. Jaw injuries or surgeries can cause discomfort and may temporarily hinder proper

In many ways, food has been imperative to political and social influences on global human society. In chapters five and seven of An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage, the importance of food and its effect on history is shown throughout the major themes of trading, the idea that food is equal to wealth, and the life-long sustenance that foods provide to people. In Standage’s book, middle-eastern botanists traded the spice of cinnamon, and potatoes were traded and seen as a valued food in all of Europe. Standage proves that food equals wealth when he wrote about the importance of spices across the Middle East. He says that people who owned spices were seen as “luxurious” because they could serve delicacies such as rare spices and could serve more flavorful food. Finally, the sustenance that spices, as well as maize/potatoes, provide is actually very similar to each other. Although spices could be seen as a more “secondary” source of sustenance, the rarity and high demand for spices allowed for trading and receiving nutritious food. On the other hand, maize was very important because almost anyone could grow maize and it could, therefore, be used as a major food supply.

How we cook food has been one of the biggest changes. Prior to the 1950s, cooking was not about being creative or enjoying cooking, although some did; was a necessity required to live. For many people, there has been a shift in cooking; if a person does not wish to cook they do not have to. Cooking has become a more enjoyable task, it is not necessarily a requirement of survival. Unless a person was a

In his book, Catching Fire: How Cooking made us Human, Wrangham’s argument asserts that cooking our food is what allowed us to develop and eventually evolve into our current human

The way we eat food has changed drastically in the past few decades. When I think of the process of how our food is made and produced, I typically think of a farm with animals laying around, eating grass, content with everything. Also, I picture ripe red tomatoes, apples, and sweet smelling fruit being pick right when it is ripened so it can get to our grocery stores. This is typically how most people picture our food coming from a farm. It is how they want us to picture it, because it is a happy image: but, it is far from the reality of how things are.

You use your mouth to chew your food, causing it to break down in pieces hence using the process of mechanical digestion, and you also use your mouth to form an enzyme known as amylase, or saliva which breaks down your food chemically, for instance when your saliva touches the bread from your sandwich it begins to form into sugars. Incase you did not know “enzymes are chemicals that are used to break down foods into other chemicals”. Saliva can also help you swallow the food by lubricating and “breaking down the complex carbohydrates into simple carbohydrates.”